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Estate life better under landlords
• I APPRECIATE the emphasis MP Emily Thornberry has given to housing.
I was glad your article highlighted that “on the Market estate and Priory Green, more than 80 per cent of residents agree there are big problems. However, only a small group of people on the Market feel their association is doing nothing about these problems, in comparison to well over half the residents of Priory Green” (‘Give tenants right to sack landlord’, March 9).
I would say that most people on the Market estate are pleased with Southern Housing as their landlords. No one is going to pretend the problems of the estate have vanished but in almost every respect the situation has been improved.
In fact, I would go further and say that, after a very long process of selection, it is a partnership that has worked. I don’t believe the offers from the other housing associations would have passed a ballot of the tenants.
However, while I appreciate the idea of an estate-level service pledge, I suspect tenants would rather frequently trigger an inspection of their service. There is also then a risk of the grass being greener… A transfer is a huge step for an estate.
In effect, the Market estate was transferred from Islington Council to be managed by Hyde Northside but when it came to a decision the Tenants’ and Residents’ Association (TRA) opted for Southern Housing for redevelopment. In effect, we did fire Hyde Northside.
It isn’t a process I would envy any TRA having to go through. I would be most concerned about promises that housing associations might make that are difficult to enforce after transfer.
Southern won both ballots because of its ethos and commitment to affordable social housing. It has stayed the course with the estate and the results are visible in an excellent redevelopment alongside the much-needed regeneration of Caledonian Park.
DAVID KELLY
Market estate, N7
• WITH typical New Labour bluff, MP Emily Thornberry rushes to champion tenants, when the situation they are in has been caused by policies promoted by her party, specifically the very department, Communities and Local Government, she is associated with.
Every estate in her “worst landlord service” list was a council estate and most were privatised under a New Labour-controlled council.
The deliberate and disgraceful policy of neglect by ignoring communal repairs, of blood stains, used syringes and condoms decorating the stairwells of the King’s Cross estates, by the then New Labour council were all designed to herd tenants towards the privatisation of their homes.
Flats were often left empty or let on a short-term basis, adding to the general feeling of neglect and alienation, and hindering the ability of tenants to argue collectively for the repairs and management which the council had a duty to provide.
Given the general despair and the huge amounts of tenants’ rent money that was ploughed into the pro-transfer propaganda, it was no great surprise that so many were conned into believing that “nothing could be worse than the council”.
Now, politicians of the same party are suggesting a better future might be obtained by tenants sacking landlords that replaced the council with yet other housing association landlords. But if that does not work, where would Emily recommend the tenants go next? Not into the hands of the private companies that New Labour is encouraging to access public funds for development, surely?
Maybe not right yet, but this is certainly the logic of New Labour’s agenda, dressed up as “choice” within the market place. Once there, it will of course no longer be a question of tenants sacking landlords but of landlords sacking tenants.
SHARON HAYWORD
Independent Working Class Association, WC1
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